Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressQuality draft selections netted the Steelers a solid tight end in Heath Miller (83), who made a high-flying catch of a Ben Roethlisberger catch in the first quarter Sunday night.

CLEVELAND --- SPINOFFS

• Two Steelers' Super Bowls in four seasons, this one with a second-year head coach younger than Eric Mangini, makes the jump to catch up to Pittsburgh look like something out of an Evel Knievel video.

The only debate is whether it's a gorge the length of two football fields the Browns need to clear, or three...

• OK, so it wouldn't have hurt for Mangini and/or George Kokinis to acknowledge the depths of despair in this city over all the woodshed beatings the Steelers dealt the Browns during the tenures of Romeo Crennel and Butch Davis before him.

It wasn't absolutely necessary for the new head coach and general manager to declare Pittsburgh the Evil Empire in their respective introductory press conferences. But hearing that the Steelers are just another division team on the schedule is like hearing Darth Vader described as just another storm trooper...

• That said, the Browns need more than a battle cry. Rhetoric won't speed the takeoff or provide significant hang time in the leap toward consistent contention.

Better drafts will. Drafts connected to a coaching philosophy. That fit the style needed to compete with Pittsburgh twice a year -- a bruising defense first and foremost...

David I. Andersen/The Plain DealerIf you're not going to draft future Hall of Famers every year with high selections (and not everyone can), then you had better at least get near-All Pro players. The Browns, says Bud Shaw, have consistently failed at that task, such as when they took Gerard Warren.

• Drafting defense isn't enough in and of itself. It has to be -- imagine -- founded in the firm footing of character checks and cross checks. So that if you pass on LaDanian Tomlinson as the Browns did in picking Gerard Warren, at least you end up with a perennial All-Pro instead of a talent in recession -- Big Money devalued to Penny right before our eyes. That was the year the Steelers took Casey Hampton.

If you then chase the Tomlinson oversight with William Green the next year -- this is all hypothetical, remember, no organization would really do this -- you have proven that character really does count, you just haven't embraced it yet. That was the year Baltimore took Ed Reed.

Catching up means getting smarter in the front office as much as on the sidelines. So you had better get a Troy Polamalu-caliber player some year by moving up in the first round as the Steelers did in 2003...

• If a Super Bowl can happen to Arizona, it can happen here, right?

The catch, though, is it happened to Arizona in a year when the rest of its division didn't boast a single team the quality of either Pittsburgh or Baltimore...

• Arizona enjoyed just its second winning season since moving to the desert in 1988. And this one was 9-7. I'm not sure that qualifies the Cardinals as an inspirational model for the Browns or anyone else...

• The Super Bowl XLIII team to emulate is the one you detest.

Does it matter if Mangini doesn't share that? When he was introduced he could've done a Jim Tressel, promising that in a certain number of days the Browns would make the city proud against Pittsburgh. But that's so college.

It came naturally to Tressel. He was an Ohio guy who could rely on equal or better talent than Michigan and had to make good on his pledge to get the best of the Wolverines.

Given how far the Browns have to go, it's no surprise if Mangini sees beating the Steelers as something to focus on only after the Browns stop beating themselves so regularly.

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